All hail His Majesty Grant Strobl

Jazz ShawPosted at 8:01 am on September 30, 2016

We’ve covered enough of these public school and college transgender pronoun stories for them to be fairly routine, but now there’s one with a twist which makes it noteworthy. When the University of Michigan not only told the students to choose their own pronoun of preference but threatened disciplinary action against professors and administrators who failed to comply, one young man saw an opportunity. Grant Strobl is apparently quite happy with the gender he was “assigned” at birth and didn’t care to be referred to as zie or hir, but he did opt for something a bit more royal sounding… His Majesty. (Fox News)

As Heat Street‘s Politics Editor Jillian Melchior reported this week, a new policy at the University of Michigan allows students to choose their preferred pronouns — including the gender-neutral “they” and “ze” — to appear on class rosters.

With that in mind, one conservative student, Grant Strobl, who is also chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom board of governors, decided to troll the university administration by officially requesting his pronoun to be changed to “His Majesty.”

Will the professors be disciplined or removed if they fail to refer to His Majesty as His Majesty? It seems to me that there wouldn’t be any choice in the matter. The school only offered all of those transgender pronouns as suggestions, not a definitive list from which one must choose. They left the door open for pretty much any interpretation and His Majesty has simply offered his own interpretation. I’m sure one could argue that Grant Strobl isn’t technically a member of the royal family of any country, but a student with a Y chromosome isn’t technically a female either. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

Stroble is obviously doing this to simply call attention to how ridiculous the policy is and admits as much. But that doesn’t mean that his choice shouldn’t be binding as long as the school sticks to this pointless rule.

So what is the school to do in response? Insisting that one of the students be referred to as “His Majesty” at all times is patently ridiculous, but now you’re faced with a rather unpleasant choice. You went out of your way to insist that nobody can tell the students what pronoun should identify them and they need the freedom to pick it themselves. But now will you modify it to say that everyone has that freedom unless it’s not on a preapproved list provided by the administration? That marks you as a group of hypocrites with an agenda rather than a welcoming institution without borders.

Personally, I hope Strobl sticks to his guns. (Er, sorry… His Majesty’s guns.) With a bit more exposure of this sort, the special snowflakes will begin melting in the sunlight fairly soon.